As snowfall hit the region yesterday, a trio of Edgewood neighbors – Dennis Reckers, Tony Sandfoss and Tony Sandfoss’ young son, Trent Sandfoss – decided to go outside and enjoy the scenery.
The street they live on leads back into Doe Run Lake in Erlanger, and as the three of them hiked the trails, they looked out across the lake and spotted them: two bald eagles perched on some trees over the water.
“We were maybe a mile and a half in, and we looked out over the lake and saw two of them perched out there, right at the point of the lake,” Tony Sandfoss said.
Both Reckers and the Sandfosses had heard about sightings in the region before. Reckers had seen discussions about them on social media, and he told LINK nky that his nieces and nephews had begun trying to locate some eagles to no avail. Tony Sandfoss said he and his son decided to go hiking yesterday with the purpose of finding some eagles.
“We’ve been wanting to go down and actually find them,” Reckers said. “And yesterday was the day.”
Bald eagles probably aren’t the first animal you think of when you think of Kentucky, but they have been documented all throughout the state.
Beginning in 1986, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, with the help of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, conducted both aerial and ground surveys of bald eagle and golden eagle populations throughout the commonwealth.
Survey methodologies were revamped after 2019 due to pressures from the pandemic, but data collected from 1986 to 2019 shows a precipitous increase in eagle nesting territories throughout Kentucky. Occupied bald eagle nesting territories increased from 43 in 2006 to 187 in 2019, according to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.
Bald eagles can be either established residents of the state or migrants from colder northern climates traveling south for the winter. Bald eagle migrations take place between September and March. It’s not known whether the eagles spotted at Doe Run Lake are a nesting pair or not, but the timing is conspicuous- eagle nesting season takes place from January to March.
At one point, the United States’ national symbol was actually in danger of dying off. During the 1960s, bald eagles even disappeared as a breeding species in Kentucky.
The population decline throughout the country was largely attributed to the use of DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), an agricultural insecticide. DDT runoff would flow into natural waterways, contaminating the fish the eagles would prey upon.
DDT exposure, rather than killing the eagles outright, tended to interfere with the birds’ ability to metabolize calcium, which, in turn, caused the thinning of eagle egg shells. Affected eggs would often break before they were fully incubated.
As a result, eagle population levels, as well as the populations of other birds of prey and waterfowl, declined. By 1963, the number of documented nesting pairs of bald eagles had tanked to 417, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, whereas roughly 200 years before, it was estimated there could have been as many as 100,000 pairs.
DDT was banned in 1972, and bald eagles were placed on the endangered species list in 1978. Since the banning of DDT, the eagles have made a remarkable comeback. They were removed from the endangered species list in 2007, and a 2021 analysis from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the number of eagles in the lower 48 states to be 316,700, including 71,467 mating pairs.
Trent Sandfoss had never seen one in the wild before yesterday.
“It was cool,” Trent Sandfoss said, adding that they seemed “majestical.”
“We’ve seen them before at the zoo,” Tony Sandfoss said, “but first time in the wild, that was pretty cool.”
Individual eagle sightings do not need to be reported to state agencies, but confirmed nesting sites should be reported to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources by emailing info.center@ky.gov or by calling 1-800-858-1549. This will help the department better track population numbers.